NEW DELHI: Former Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) who is currently All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam AIADMK interim general breathed a sigh of relief as the Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed plea filed by O Panneerselvam (OPS) challenging Madras HC’s September 2 verdict that restored EPS as party’s single leader.
A bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Hrishikesh Roy while affirming HCs order also made absolute it’s July 6, 2022 order. SC in its July 6th order had stayed HCs order that had restrained the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general council from amending party by-laws during its meeting. Further SC had also refused to interfere with the call made by the party to conduct a general council meeting on 11 July.
While pronouncing the order, the court said, “We have affirmed the HCs judgement dated 2.9.2022, we have made that our earlier interim order dated 6/7/2022 absolute. While leaving other things open, before closing on these matters we need to make it clear again that though submissions have been made on behalf of the appellants assailing the correctness of the resolutions said to have been adopted in the meeting dated July 11 & in counter to that the respondents have attempted to justify the said decisions resolutions but we chosen not to deal with any of those contentions. This is for the reasons that the decisions taken in the meeting do not form the subject matter for the applications for temporary relief which were restored for reconsideration by this court & ultimately decided by single judge by order dated August 17.”
On September 2, 2022 a division bench of Justices M Duraiswamy and Sunder Mohan in an appeal preferred by EPS had set aside a single judge’s order dated August 17. Order of the single judge had nullified the results of July 11 General Council and ordered status quo ante as on June 23 in AIADMK affairs.
As a result of the resolution passed by the General Council, in the July 11 meeting, EPS had become the single leader of the party and had discarded AIADMK’s dual leadership mode of functioning. OPS was expelled from party’s primary membership. As per the dual mode, OPS and EPS were coordinator and joint coordinator respectively. This was in effect since the death of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha.
The division bench in its 127 page order observed that a single judge’s order had created a functional deadlock in the party as there was no possibility for EPS and OPS to act jointly.